The end of World War II brought Allied occupation forces into Germany. United States, British and French forces included numerous soldiers of African American, Afro-Caribbean or African descent, and some of them fathered children with German women. At the time, the armed forces and Germany generally had non-fraternization rules and discouraged interracial marriages. Most single German mothers kept their "brown babies", but thousands were adopted by American families and grew up in the United States. Often they did not learn their full ancestry until reaching adulthood.
Until the end of the Cold War, the United States kept more than 100,000 U.S. soldiers stationed on German soil. These men established their lives in Germany. They often brought families with them or founded new ones with German wives and children.
Cities with considerable population of Black African descent

Turks in Germany (German: Deutsch-Türken; Turkish: Almanya Türkleri) refers to Turks and people of Turkish descent in Germany. The term is not confined to ethnic Turks but also includes ethnic Kurds and generally all ethnicities from Turkey living in Germany. German Turks form the largest ethnic minority.[4][5][6] Estimates range between 2.5–2.7 million,[7] 2.7 million,[8] 3.5 million[9][dead link] and more than 4 million Turks and German citizens with part or full Turkish ancestry in Germany,[10][11] forming about 4-5% of Germany's total population.[3] Out of this group, Kurds are estimated to number around 500,000 people.[12]

Immigration into GermanyTurks in Berlin before the recruitment agreement[18]187841189319819172,04619251,164193358519383,310194 579
The large scale of immigration of Turkish workers from the beginning of the 1960s was due both to the high population growth and mass unemployment within Turkey and also to the demand for labour in north-west Europe.[19]West Germany, like other Western European nations, had begun to experience a labour shortage by the mid-1950s.[20] Recruitment of workers from Mediterranean countries was one solution to this problem.[21] In 1961, the construction of the Berlin Wall exacerbated West Germany's labour crisis by restricting the flow of immigrants from East Germany. Turkey at the same time experienced unemployment. The Turkish government asked Germany to recruit Turkish guest workers. Theodor Blank, Secretary of State for Employment, was opposed to such agreements, believing that the cultural gap between Germany and Turkey was too large. He also argued that Germany needed no additional foreign laborers, because there were enough unemployed people living in the poorer regions of Germany who could take these jobs. But the United States put some political pressure on Germany, as it wanted to stabilize Turkey[citation needed]. The German Department of Foreign Affairs carried on negotiations after this and in 1961 an agreement was reached.[22][23] Pressure from German employers in 1962 and 1963 played a key role in ending the two-year limit on the time for which Turkish workers were permitted to stay in West Germany.[24]
In 1961, a total of 7,116 Turks migrated to Germany as guest workers.[25] The recruitment treaty in 1961 made Germany the prime host country for Turkish guest workers, and by 1973 some 80% of the Turks in Western Europe lived in Germany. Although this share had decreased to 70% by 1990, Germany remained by far the most important country of settlement for Turkish immigrants.[26] Most Turks were convinced that they would only stay in Germany temporarily and would one day return to Turkey to build a new life for themselves with the money they had earned. During the recession of 1966-1967, the number of Turks leaving Germany rapidly increased; and there were more departures during the 1973 oil crisis.[27] The last increase in departures in 1981-1984 was caused by mass unemployment in Germany and the policy of giving remigration bonuses to Turks who were willing to return to their homeland for good. However, the number of migrants who returned to Turkey was relatively small and did not stop the rapid increase of the Turkish population in Germany.[28][edit] Family reunification

In the 1970s, some 400,000 Turkish workers returned to Turkey, but others took advantage of the right of family reunification to have their families join them in Germany.[29] As a result, between 1974–1988, the number of Turks in Germany nearly doubled, achieving a normalised sex ratio and a much younger age profile than the German population because of the larger numbers of children per family. In 1987, 21% of ethnic Germans were under the age of 21, compared to 42% of the Turks in Germany.[30] The recession of 1967 temporarily halted the progress of worker recruitment, but when it resumed, the targeted employees had changed as the BfA (Bundesversicherungsanstalt für Angestellte) granted most work visas to women. This was in part because labour shortages continued in low paying, low-status service jobs such as electronics, textiles, and garment work; and in part to further the goal of family reunification.[31] Family reunification was a solution to the perceived social threat from foreign workers, single men living in worker hostels or dormitories, with extra money in their pockets. Many wives did join their husbands in Germany, but women also came hoping to bring their husbands and children to Germany in the future. Moreover, many Turkish workers in Germany could save enough money to return home to marry and bring their brides back to Germany when the 1974 Unification of Families Law made this easier. By 1976, 27% of Turks in West Germany were women.[32]